Opinion Video: Jokes aside, FAU makes good deal

Jokes must be expected for the new name of the football stadium at Florida Atlantic University, home to the Owls.

If you sell your stadium's naming rights to a company that runs private prisons, as FAU has done, you better count on the one-liners.

Owlcatraz is particularly inspired.

But if the jokes are justified, some of the complaints, particularly online, are short-sighted.

The university's board of trustees this week formally accepted a "gift" of $6 million from Boca Raton-based GEO Group, a private correctional facilities company. Locally, the company runs the South Bay Correctional Facility and the Broward Transition Center in Pompano Beach, which holds immigration detainees.

In return for the gift, the university's $70 million football stadium will be called GEO Group Stadium for the next 12 years.

GEO is a legitimate company with $3 billion in assets, folks. It is not as if the place is going to be called Scott Rothstein Stadium, for goodness sake.

We can understand some folks being upset, since GEO Group has come under fire for treatment of inmates and employees. It's also flexing a powerful political muscle in Tallahassee to get Florida to outsource the operations of more state prisons, which could cost more state workers their jobs.

But again, this is a local company doing legitimate business, and $6 million will go a long way toward addressing the financial challenges facing FAU's athletics program.

It's not as if securing big money for stadium naming rights is easy. Have you noticed that a year after it opened, the Miami Marlins are still playing in Marlins Park?

Naming FAU's stadium after a milk company or a nursery might have been preferable. But the palatability of naming-rights deals is in the eyes of the beholder. An FAU spokesperson Wednesday said response to the naming deal has been "mixed."

Boise State's basketball arena is named after Taco Bell and the University of Louisville has Papa John's Cardinal Stadium. Neither probably thrills nutritionists.

Several stadiums around the country have sold naming rights to banks, which have undoubtedly foreclosed on homes and made countless people upset. The University of Colorado has Coors Events Center, which can't thrill folks who hate the link between college and alcohol consumption.

Locally, Sun Life Stadium has faced a sea of name changes since it opened as Joe Robbie Stadium in 1987. At times, Sun Life has been named for an underwear company (Pro Player) and a beer (Land Shark).

You are not going to please everyone with the stadium name. If a university can get a legitimate local company — GEO's founder and CEO is George Zoley, an FAU alumnus and former chair of the school's board of trustees — to pay millions, you must have many good reasons to turn it down. Certainly, GEO gets publicity and credibility with the deal, but that comes along with paying millions.

All in all, it looks like a good deal for FAU.

Remember, this was a school that didn't have a big-time football program until 2001, yet in 2007 became the fastest start-up program to win a bowl game. Now the team has a $70 million stadium and a naming rights partner.

Once football season begins, its doubtful the stadium's name will cause much controversy. Fans will mostly be concerned with what they see on the scoreboard.